Professional Roles and Responsiblities, Part 7

Question 1: Explain why the school nurse is unique within the school system.

Answer 1: Medical information is held to a higher standard of privacy and precision than other school records. The school nurse is the only health professional within the school system with both education and nursing training. The nurse has a unique role and broad responsibilities, which include health teaching, health promotion, and disease prevention in the school community. The school nurse exercises independent professional judgment to make clinical decisions. The school nurse assesses, diagnoses, and identifies the desired outcome, and then she plans, implements, and evaluates in a holistic, ethical manner. The school nurse is a leader, patient advocate, mentor, role model, and liaison. Unlike a teacher, one school nurse may be responsible for 750 students, or she may split shifts between different schools. The nurse is involved in much more complex cases than most teachers are. The nurse persuades teachers to allow the student some leeway for dealing with painful procedures, depression, and drug side effects.

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Question 2: Give an example of how the school nurse can advocate for the profession.

Answer 2: Money for school health budgets is restricted throughout the country, not just in Illinois. The school nurse can help reduce job cuts by providing statistical proof to school administrators, policymakers, the school board, and parents that school nurses improve student outcomes. The nurse can download a free School Nurse Advocacy Tool Kit (SNATK) from the California School Nurses Association. The SNATK provides the nurse with data collection tools to make convincing presentations that positively influence funding to the health program. SNATK allows the nurse to easily make surveys about health issues and then turn the results into color-coded tables and graphs that show trends over time. (The statistics can be used later for nursing research and publications.

Question 3: Give an example of how the school nurse advocates, mentors, and serves as a role model for students, families, and staff.

Answer 3: Since the recession started, an increasing number of American families are either uninsured or underinsured. The school nurse often provides the only primary health care available to low-income families, and he may screen children with suspected fractures and infections before the family decides to go to the hospital. The school nurse advocates for these families by arranging transportation and obtaining free or low-cost dental care, eyeglasses, hearing aids, wheelchairs, and specialist appointments. The experienced school nurse mentors new nurses, teaching assistants, medical technicians, and teachers, imparting knowledge that can only be gained over time about the school’s unique population, without threatening the employee’s position through performance evaluation. The school nurse models healthy behaviors for families, such as not smoking, exercising daily, and relaxing to reduce stress, so that the school community can imitate his exemplary behavior to improve their health status.

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